The Tragedy section of Volume 1 of The Pepys Ballads is not punctuated by sympathetic characters. Pepys seems to have used the category for ballads that follow Sidney’s definition of tragedy in which moral teachings are emphasized. The ballads in the group would also please Sidney in that none mingle the comic and the tragic. However, unlike Aristotle who included catharsis in his definition of tragedy, these moral teachings are driven home by the penalty exacted upon transgressors. Each of the ballads included in the group, with the exception of ballad 1.112 on the death of Henry IV of France, leaves the reader with a distinct lesson: doing evil will result in punishment, usually death. Women who kill their husbands, tradesmen who abuse their apprentices, thieves and robbers who ply their trade with unusual ferocity, even a group of witches who plague an earl and his family are all brought to justice and sentenced to die for their actions.

In only one of the ballads is a murder committed that goes unpunished: in “The Tragedy of Dr. Lambe . . .” Martin Parker describes how England is finally free of Dr. Lambe’s evil “conjurations” because a group of sailors and apprentices followed him to a bar and beat him severely enough that he dies (1.134-135). Unlike many of the tragic ballads which have a somber tone and include repentance on the part of the wrongdoers, this ballad is jubilant and qualifies for inclusion in the category namely because Dr. Lambe’s evil doing finally catches up with him. The ballad is also a departure from the group in that justice is brought about by a group of laymen rather than the courts.

The role of the law in this section should not be underestimated. Although the subjects of the tragical ballads may live long lives of dissolution, eventually they are caught and brought to trial. This trial often brings about repentance on the part of the criminal so that the second part of the ballad is a first-person warning not to follow in his/her footsteps. John Spenser, a Cheshire gallant says, “Kind youngmen all to mee give eare, / observe these lessons well” as he goes on to condemn his life of fast women and false friends (1.114-115). The husband-killers also give good-night laments on the eve of their executions. Anne Wallen asks for forgiveness from her husband’s mother for taking away her only son and finally advises, “Then wives be warn’d example take by me. / Heavens graunt no more that such a one may be” before her final lines, “In burning flames of fire I should fry, / Receive my soule sweete Jesus now I die” (1.124-125).

Many of the ballads in the Tragedy section emphasize both the inability of sinners to escape from justice and the ability of Jesus to forgive even the most terrible sins. When they are caught, many of the criminals confess on the spot, thereby reinforcing the order that is restored once a transgressor has been arraigned by the proper authorities. Even Sir Walter Raleigh praises the king on the eve of his execution, after thirteen years in the tower, because “his royall Grace / Gave me both time and space / Repentance to embrace: / Now heaven be praised” (1.110-111). Perhaps then there is a sort of catharsis that comes about in the ballads that include confessions. While the reader is not meant to identify too closely with a woman who takes her husband's life with a cudgel, it is possible to believe that she is sorry for her actions and hope that she will be accepted into heaven.

On the surface these ballads may seem to have much in common with the local nightly news. Horrible deeds are often gruesomely described; the second apprentice that a weaver named Richard Price kills is found with his brains “broken forth / and his neck burst in twaine” (1.116-117). But the difference between modern reporting and these ballads is that the gory details are not restricted to descriptions of the victim. Anne Wallen is not shy about describing her fiery death, and Sir Walter Raleigh speaks of laying his head on the chopping block and advises his executioner, “when thou lift, when thou lift, / Without feare bee thy part” (1.110-111). The reader is subject to Dr. Lambe’s broken arm and gouged out eyes, George Sand’s hanging, and Joane Flower’s asphyxiation on a piece of bread. These are the tribulations suffered by the one who has committed the wrong. In the ballad about Dr. Lambe, Martin Parker does not even go into Lambe’s various misdeeds, “I neede name none on’s feates, / That are well knowne already.” The purpose of “The Tragedy of Dr. Lambe, . . .” is to instruct the reader about the terrible end met by the doctor, not to recount the various acts that made him known as “The Devill of our Nation.” Because justice moved swiftly in early modern England, readers often learn about a crime at the same time as they learn what punishment is to be exacted upon the criminal. The ballads in this section were often sold at the executions of the subjects so that the public could take home a memento of a hanging or burning in the form of a broadside complete with woodcuts depicting the criminal’s untimely end (see 1.114-115, 1.120-121, and 1.124-125, as examples of these “good-night” ballads).

~ Tassie Gniady

Works Cited

Pepys, Samuel. The Pepys Ballads: Facsimile Volume. Ed. W.G. Day. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987.